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King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU to Present Symposium Exploring the Iconographies of Atrocity – Apr. 25 & 26

April 18, 2013

King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University will present a two-part symposium on Thursday, April 25, 6 p.m.-9 p.m., and Friday, April 26, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., entitled “The Desire to See: The Construction and Circulation of Images of Atrocity.”

The symposium will take place at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, located at 43 Washington Square South (between Thompson and Sullivan streets). It is free and open to the public.

Organized by Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, a professor of film studies at University of Valencia, Spain, and University of Paris III, France, and holder of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization for spring 2013, thesel discussions will explore, critically, the construction of iconographies of violence—war, genocide, and other forms of mass killing—through the circulation of visual images across media. The focus is on how the moving image and photography have created a repertoire of images of atrocity by drawing on and reworking previous cinematic and photographic material. How have these iconographies of violence changed over time? What are their geographical and historical specificities? What happens when they migrate from a particular period or part of the world to another, and when they migrate across media? How have they been socialized, interpreted, and re-interpreted? What do they omit or elide?

The discussions will also ask, How have the iconographies of mass violence intersected with regimes of power? Can such images connect the spectator with the event depicted, even if only tenuously? How is the violence of the event encrypted in the image? What are the limits of representation? A specific concern will be the demand for images of atrocity—a desire to know that takes the form of a desire to see—and the strategies of substitution to which filmmakers have recourse to satisfy this demand when footage of the violent event is not available. In what ways can such images be called documents? What kinds of knowledge can they provide?

The panels will mix presentations with screenings of relevant material. In addition to the Spanish Civil War (the first war to generate a transnational proliferation of moving and still images and the consequent "desire to see") and the Shoah (whose paradigmatic status is evident),the case studies discussed will include Cambodia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Argentina, and the U.S.